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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Fram2 private manned mission splashes down safely

The Fram2 private commercial manned mission successfully ended today when SpaceX’s Resilience capsule splashed down safely off the coast of California.

The crew spent about four days in space, circling the Earth in the first polar orbit by a human crew.

This was SpaceX’s sixth privately funded manned mission. Three docked with ISS and were paid for by Axiom. Three flew independently, with two paid by Jared Isaacman and one by Chun Weng (which landed today). Plus Axiom has scheduled its next ISS commercial flight for May, 2025, using a new SpaceX capsule (bringing the company’s manned fleet to five spacecraft).

As I noted earlier this week, SpaceX is making space exploration profitable, which in turn makes the government irrelevant. And ain’t that a kick?

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • John

    I’ll give them advice, it will be more profitable if they can make it affordable for schmucks like me.

    Usually I know about launches and landings from forum posts, X feed, or websites like this. Was this kept under wraps for some reason?

    I would have watched to feed my jealousy of the occupants.

  • Yngvar

    “Fram”, a Norwegian word, means “Forward”.

  • pzatchok

    John

    I do think that Falcon 9 launches are pretty much price fixed by now.
    The basic launch like this one with all used equipment. Low Earth Orbit and everything recovered.

    The next is a higher orbit with more fuel and less cargo

    The next is using all the fuel and watch the first stage crash.

    If you really want to go high cost launch throw in an all new rocket to the mix.

    If the lowest cost launch is 40 million then that is a cheap 10 million per seat.
    I can not see them getting the cost down to 10 million a launch even with a well used falcon 9. And that would bring the price down to 2.5 million a seat and place it into the realm of “normal” millionaires.

  • Yngvar says: ““Fram”, a Norwegian word, means “Forward”.”

    For a lot of Americans who used to do maintenance on their vehicles, it also means oil filter, though pronounced differently. Cheers –

  • wayne

    Guns-n-Roses
    “Civil War”
    https://youtu.be/ql0lUqbQtn4
    7:43

    “I don’t need your civil war,
    It feeds the rich, while it buries the poor.
    You’re power-hungry, sellin’ soldiers in a human grocery store,
    Ain’t that fresh?”

  • Mark

    The $10 million F9 2nd stage is always lost on every flight. Add RTLS booster refresh plus fairing recovery costs and $25-30 mill is probably as cheap as it gets w/o GM added in. Neutron, FH/SS, Stoke Space with reusable 2nd stages will be the real game changers.

  • Jeff Wright

    So I guess we can say that they were inconvenienced and not stranded

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